


The City on the Edge of Forever

by pipisafoat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:45:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipisafoat/pseuds/pipisafoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Atlantis will tip over the edge and join the rest of the human species in forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The City on the Edge of Forever

The first seventeen hours are a mystery. Ryad has spent most of his life studying the City on the Edge of Forever, even writing his graduate thesis on the events of those first seventeen hours. Hours - it's such an archaic term now, but everyone who studies the City is familiar with it. Hours, minutes, and years. The old definition of a month. A day that isn't a Standard Day, though it is; the City was legend enough even back then that a day was standardized to its pre-dilation time.

Ryad waits in front of the machine eagerly. Though they only release footage from inside the City once a year, the machine compiles enough for his study every month. Though it's only half of a City-minute, ten zelcons, he spends the entire month analyzing it, studying it, and preparing his report on the time to be released along with the year's footage. This year, the release has been delayed because of his analysis, and the whole universe is waiting along with him.

The machine's quiet hum doesn't change, but a light begins to glow a soft blue. Ryad places his forehead against the scanner, sending his authorization to play the recorded time universally without review. A screen glows into being above the machine, and two men appear on it.

"Well, come on, Rodney," the one named Sheppard says. "Push the damn button."

Rodney huffs, a mannerism Ryad's people find extremely quaint and no small amount baffling. "You do realize that I have no way of knowing how much time has passed outside of Atlantis, right?"

Ryad contains his glee at finally knowing their name for the City. Atlantis, the City on the Edge of Forever. It has an appropriately ceremonious ring to it.

"But you know the Wraith are gone." Sheppard cocks his head to one side. "Don't you?"

"Yes, yes, I've run all the scans I possibly can in the past hour. But the data indicates that the hour in here was somewhere between ten and fifteen years outside the field. There's significant advancement and definite human life--"

"That might disappear if you don't push the button." Sheppard shakes his head.

"Okay, okay!" Rodney's hand descends towards the button in question, just beginning to make contact as the recording ends.

Ryad grins, not caring if it doesn't befit a man of his station. With a maximum of one zelcon for him to push the button and two more for the field to begin the dissipate ... He whoops out loud, startling more than half of the human population. "My comrades, barring further argument from within, we can expect to meet the people of the City - the people of Atlantis - within ten standard days!" It is a one-way link, but Ryad imagines that he can hear others celebrating along with him.

He sighs happily as he terminates the broadcast and replays the recording. "Okay, okay!" aren't exactly the words Ryad would have chosen for them to speak at the moment of their emergence, but he supposes they are unaware of the watchers, unaware of their status in the civilization they never would have dreamed of. It will all be very overwhelming when the field ends, he muses. He should take the next few days to draw up plans for the Citiers - no, he can call them something better now, he can make their new name - the Atlanteans. He should take the time to clear space around their city so they can emerge without alarm, set himself in position to be the first ambassador, to be the first to set foot in the legendary City.

He turns on all the footage they have from inside the City, a full day's worth of video. It's not enough to get to know a people who have been outside of time for nearly five hundred years, but it's all he has to go on. One more viewing can do nothing but help, though he's seen it all more times than he can count. Atlantis will tip over the edge and join the rest of the human species in forever, and he will be the one to draw the two cultures together.


End file.
